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Saturday, June 25, 2011

A Place for Toilet Paper. Yes Toilet Paper....

Earlier in the week, I showed you in my post It's All About Toilet Paper, this little stand and thinga ma bob that I was wanting to transform into a toilet paper holder/personal products center. If you want the back story you are going to have to click on the link I provided. Here are the basic 'before' images.﻿

Stand "before" with
Thinga ma bob

Thinga ma bob

So I set out to transform this. I painted the stand with Annie Sloans Chalk Paint in Old White. It took three coats of the paint to cover this piece. Once again, I just didn't experience the time saving aspects of this paint that so many other people out there are experiencing. At any rate, I took the little drawer pull off the stand and looked through some stuff over at The Graphics Fairy and found this little graphic of an invitation. I copied off many more pieces, but landed on this one.

I also used another graphic on the top.....and get ready for a bit of honesty.....I placed it on off center and it was permanent before I knew it. Here is what it looked like.﻿﻿

Off center....I am bummed.

﻿﻿Between the flood in my house and this little mishap, I tabled (no pun intended) this part of the project. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and my creativity was somewhat dampened. (pun intended)

I turned my attention to making a wire basket for my personal products (aka tampons....can we say that word on a blog?!) The basket was pretty easy to construct, but I did cut up my hands a little. I found a totally cool old muslin sugar sack the other day at the antiques mall. I had planned on using the sack as the liner. I pinned the sack onto the one side of the basket to get an idea of what it would look like. It all stopped there. I wasn't one hundred percent that I wanted to go this route because the basket was kinda cute, but just wasn't doing it for me.

Yesterday, I stopped into my local Home Goods store and was strolling around with nothing in mind, when I found a banana leaf basket that I thought could work. For only $3.99 I scooped it up. Heck, the wire for the handmade basket cost me more than that! Once I got it home, I tried it out and liked what I saw, except I am thinking it needs a lid.

Finding the basket gave me the little lift that I needed to tackle fixing my mistake on the top of the stand. I took the misplaced label off the top and sanded it all down with my trusty Black and Decker Mouse.

At this point I decided that I wanted to cover the entire top. With the top measuring about an inch wider than standard printer paper, I knew that I needed to think of some other avenue to achieve this. I rummaged through my decorative paper stash and came up with a paper that I love and thought would pair well with the invitation in terms of overall color and tone. I cut it to size and used my Modge Podge to attach it firmly to the top making sure that all the edges were tight.

All in all, this project was enjoyable. I don't think that I anticipated the challenges, but sometimes that happens. You cannot anticipate everything. I do like how it seems to have merged several of my interests. First, re-purposing a found object. Now the thinga ma bob is a toilet roll dispenser. Second, saving something I intended on getting rid of ....the stand. Third, mixing different media onto a piece to give it personality and new life. It all came together to solve a problem (Not being able to hang a toilet roll dispenser on the wall.) in an out of the box, more creative way. Here are the final images.

Can't figure out whether I like the basket on the top or the bottom. I also think it needs some sort of lid. What do you think? Up, down? Lid, no lid? Am I being too picky about wanting to cover up my tampons? Must be my old fashioned upbringing.....

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look at my project. If you are new to The Homeless Finch, stay a while and look around. I have a myriad of stuff for you to see from yard sale and thrift store finds to fun furniture projects and a few little crafty projects for home and friends too. Below is a list with links to some of my more favorite projects.

25 comments:

That's the fanciest toilet paper/feminine product holder I've ever seen! LOL! I actually like the pop of color the tampons produce from the holder - hahaha! Maybe a lid to appease the silly men though! Very cute!

Lesley this is awesome! I love how messing up leads to something else that usually turns out better anyway. I would keep the basket on the bottom and put MORE stuff on the top. Totally clever project with your fancy TP! JenT

Why don't you find a piece of cardboard, cover it with the same paper, MP it and just slide it on top of the basket? Or, do the label again, but you get the idea...I wonder what that thing is, you have got me stumped.

Love the primitive t.p. holder! I have an old clothes washing apparatus in our basement bath, but it is a bit taller and I can stack about 5 rolls on it. No more excuses for not replacing an empty roll!

I love how the table turned out. I also like your use of the thinga mabob. Now you've given me the idea to blog about my unique toilet paper holder. hehehe I like the tampon basket below and want a cover but I'm coming up short with any ideas. Why not a well placed book/magazine? Then you can just move it when you need the supplies.

I love your writing style! Everything came out so beautiful... loved how you finished the whole table with chalk paint and the banana leaf basket looks just perfect.. it look great top or bottom, and maybe you can switch them around at your will, besides I like the added pop of color of those paper wraps.. I loved how you decoupaged the entire tabletop instead of just in the middle of the table.. Great post! Thanks for sharing with us! Visiting from the Newbie Party. Happy a great week!~Poppy

This turned out sooo cute! I like Suzie Q's idea for making a cover out of cardboard and using the same paper to make it cute...so clever SQ! I love the way you gave that thingamabog a real job in life and totally good looking too! Great job!